Mark Levinson No. 5909 - High Resolution Wireless Headphones with Active Noise Cancellation (Red)

Product Information

The very first fence the No. 5909 face is a tall one. After all, what’s to be done about the design of over-ear headphones? They all look basically the same, and for good reason. So be as discerning and judicious as you like about the materials you use - your over-ear headphones are going to end up looking just like everybody else’s.

Notice the much improved bass and matching of channels! Shoot, I could have saved half hour if I knew this. There was another major impact and that was in Group Delay: Now then. Do you listen at (relatively) high volume? If so, that may have something to do with sapping of the battery juice. All that folding/unfolding stuff might also deplete the flux crapacitor. I prefer musicality in tone to clinical on this headphone, but you can get more of either depending on your rig, so rig-pair carefully with your preferences. The Mark Levinson No. 5909 were comfortable to wear for long listening sessions, even with the surprisingly thin padding on the headband. PC Setup: SoundblasterX G6 DAC -> JDS Labs Atom Headphone Amp -> Sennheiser HD560s & AKG K702 & Hifiman HE4XX & NAD HP50 & Sennheiser HD600 all EQ'd to Harman Curve. IEM: TRUTHEAR x Crinacle Zero.Well I don’t know what review you read, but I clearly mentioned there was a hefty case in my review here above. Here is a copy and paste of that paragraph. The bass is some of the cleanest I’ve heard from wireless headphones. Admittedly not as rich as with the Sennheiser Momentum 4 and especially the Sony WH-1000XM5, but definitely cleaner. And much faster! Mark Levinson simply has better bass. Flat pop productions unfortunately sound a bit tame, but then you can turn up the bass in the app. Photo. Mark Levinson Energetic midrange The No. 5909 has Bluetooth 5.1, as well as wired potential. As I’ve recently said a few times, the modern era BT tech is advancing to the point that wires aren’t going to be needed soon, even on audiophile products. The Mark Levinson No. 5909 is a middle ground vocal presentation experience, one that is not forward, but not recessed either. It plays it safe and apparently was tuned to the Harman Curve, specifically.

You get a premium-feeling travel case with the headphones. (Image credit: TechRadar) Mark Levinson No. 5909: price and release date This must surely be a new record in terms of price for a Bluetooth headphone? I believe the previous record was 899 EUR/USD for a B&O headphone (H95?). Mark Levinson, with a lot of help from John Curl and other designers, focused on creating the world’s best solid-state amplifiers and pre-amplifiers with the intended goal of always recreating what was recorded in the studio. Such is not the case here. The No. 5909 is wildly coherent in every direction. And when everything meshes just right like this, the experience feels broad and engaging. It feels interesting, and you don’t focus on one part of it like you would the HD800, for example. Instead don’t focus at all and sort of end up turning your brain off to the sound staging qualities. I tend to do that with my Beyerdynamic T5, which also has a very coherent sound. Coherency

Introducing the № 5909

The imaging factor is hyper-balanced, meaning the width and height are equal, as is the depth of field. Sometimes many headphones have one element of the imaging that is superior to the rest by a large factor. As you see, in pass-through analog mode, the headphone went out of control at 114 dBSPL and with digital, it would simply not get that loud. Otherwise, distortion is extremely low. Considering that we don't need to boost anything, this is even better result than it seems. Here is the absolute level distortion: High-end audio gear—Mark Levinson products in particular—typically eschew bells and whistles, flashy features, and anything that might taint the audio signal path. As a result, the Mark Levinson companion app has a Spartan feature set compared to some of its competitors. The app tells you the headphones’ current charge and gives you the option to select noise-cancelling or ambient-aware modes, set the auto-off timer, enable on-head detection, and perhaps most importantly, set the Harman target curve bass contour. Harman has developed its own frequency curve for headphones. The Harman curve is well known in the industry, and one that many headphone manufacturers aim to follow. It is not frequency linear, but instead attempts to mimic the frequency response of a pair of linear speakers playing in a room. By taking the room’s influence into account, the headphones will be perceived more as frequency linear, rather than actually being so. And should you get those thoughts – then yes, Mark Levinson also seeks to follow that curve as best as possible. Photo: Mark Levinson Three levels of noise reduction

Interesting notes on the soundstage/spatial listening test - that it didn't perform well, in terms of it felt closed in.......and given it had a good measured frequency response, does seem to tally that soundstage is related to "physical design structure" of a headphone rather than strictly it's measured frequency response on a dummy head. The Levinson loved to play big and bold with orchestral works, such as Hungarian Rhapsody No. 2 in C-Sharp Minor, conducted by Leopold Stokowski, delivered the grand staging, transparency, detail, and dynamics that makes classical works shine.Considering all the other features in this model and for this price, I would rate the fidelity factor for its low-end as very good for the performance involved. The good news is that this product offers the most affordable route into owning a piece of equipment from the revered Mark Levinson brand. The bad news is that it’s a pair of wireless headphones costing well in excess of what most people consider ‘premium’. Theo Nicolakis is a C-Level technologist and digital communications professional. He's also a passionate audiophile and home theater aficionado.

Experience the first-ever headphones from Mark Levinson, a pioneer in high-fidelity audio for the past 50 years. Reference-quality sound meets luxurious comfort in a lightweight and durable set of headphones featuring Adaptive Active Noise Cancellation (ANC) that’s perfect for travel. Reveal the hidden details in your music – at home, on the go, or anywhere you find a moment to listen. Vocals were pristine with near perfect timbral accuracy. Vocals were rendered with the clarity, detail, and the flat-out hair-raising purity that you’ll experience from a high-end loudspeaker. For example, Elaine Paige’s iconic rendition of “Memory,” from Cats, played through the No. 5909 was intimate, energetic, and intoxicating.

The Mark Levinson No. 5909 cost as much as three pairs of headphones

The Mark Levinson No. 5909 is not an imaging champion, but it doesn’t let me down at all. This entire headphone is hand-tuned and not just random parts put together. They had an idea for how it should sound and they invoked the parts needed to make it that specific way.